Forensic Disk Differencing

Forensic Disk Differencing is the process of taking two or more disk images from the same computer and determining what changes in the first disk image might have resulted in the changes that are observed in the second. One common use of differencing is to determine what an attacker did during a break-in. To be used for this purpose, it is necessary to have a forensic disk image of the computer before the break-in and after the break-in.

Differencing Tools

idifference.py

idifference.py is part of the Digital Forensics XML Python Toolkit distributed with fiwalk. This tool will compare two different disk images and report changes in files between the first and the second. It also produces a timeline of changes.